Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis (4 stars)

A very well-written account of the birth and rise of High Frequency Trading and how it has changed electronically traded markets forever, in a way that is bad for everybody except HFT itself. I've waited far too long to review this one, so that's all I have to say :)

4 stars

American Sniper by Chris Kyle (2 stars)

I was fairly sure I was going to dislike this book, and I was right, but I wanted to read what all the fuss was about. E.B. Sledge's amazing account of the war in the Pacific remains the best ever wartime autobiography I have read.

Of course the writing was weak, Kyle is not a gifted wordsmith, he's a SEAL. Most of the novel is a series of anecdotes that aren't particularly well connected, and they stretch very thin at some points. "We found barrels of chemical material", next paragraph, "One day we saw some things in the desert and thought they were IEDs" (it was an airplane), next paragraph a different anecdote. And so on.

I do give credit to Kyle for some humility, he could have talked up his record breaking number of kills a lot more, but he acknowledges that it was mostly a case of getting the most opportunities to shoot: i.e. a twisted kind of "luck". There are a number of times that other snipers bitch and moan about how Kyle always seems to get engaged by the enemy, and they aren't seeing any action.

But my high total and my so-called “legend” have much to do with the fact that I was in the shit a lot. In other words, I had more opportunities than most. I served back-to-back deployments from right before the Iraq War kicked off until the time I got out in 2009.

Kyle states that the majority of the actual shooting was about checking rules of engagement and taking shots quickly. The technical details of the business of shooting itself were actually fairly light, probably because there wasn't a whole lot more to say. Readers expecting to geek out on lots of gun and shooting details will be disappointed.

The meat of the novel: Kyle's training and deployments were interesting to me, as were his personal convictions and the sections written by his wife on her perspective from home. The impression I got from these sections were that Kyle was the perfect soldier from a mental perspective. Sure he was well-trained and obviously good with a gun, but he also had an incredible and unshakable belief that:

• He was fighting a "SAVAGE, DESPICABLE EVIL" in a very biblical sense. He's on the good side, the insurgents are the bad side. "I have a strong sense of justice. It's pretty much black-and-white. I don't see too much gray."
• Every single person he shot absolutely deserved to die, and they were "trying to harm Americans or Iraqis loyal to the new government."
• This war and his commitment to his country were more important than anything else, including his wife and child. He made this very clear to his wife.

His genuine request to "be cleared hot to shoot anyone on a moped." and outrage when it was denied throws some doubt on the second point, or at least reinforces how important well-defined ROEs are. His general attitude to the rules of engagement and recording the circumstances of kills was "I’m pretty sure it was all CYA—cover your ass, or, in this case, cover the top guy’s ass."

The impression I got from him was that the job was killing bad guys, and nothing else. The blood red crusader cross tattoo and punisher logos painted on armor and vehicles would seem to agree, it doesn't exactly scream "hearts and minds" or "this isn't a religious war".

I didn't need any convincing that loved every minute of being deployed as a SEAL sniper:

I'm not lying or exaggerating to say it was fun. I had the time of my life being a SEAL.

I wanted, more than anything, to experience the thrill of battle.

THE PACE WAS HOT AND HEAVY. IT MADE US WANT MORE. WE ached for it. When the bad guys were hiding, we tried to dare them into showing themselves so we could take them down. 

This last is why everyone should understand the motivations behind advice from the armed forces when debating whether to go to war. Who wouldn't want to go do what you've been training your whole life for?

2 stars